


Distance

by juhouzee



Series: Double Down, Lead Head [1]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Drug Addiction, Rating May Change, Tags May Change, basically change is imminent and I hope you're ready for it, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2020-01-17
Packaged: 2020-06-28 10:25:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19810348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juhouzee/pseuds/juhouzee
Summary: Jamie has always had wanderlust. It's just that now, she can really feel free as she goes.





	1. 3:14 AM

Jamie looks to the ceiling, tapping her fingers along her bare, freckled midriff. Chipped nails, a deep, emerald green to rival the fiery timbre of her hair.

Guts huffs from the chair he had claimed for himself, rolling over to hang his head off of the armrest. At the edge of the bed, Cooper lays atop of her feet.

The woman huffs something like a choked snort. Her discarded pip-boy, like the solar clock hanging on the wall, reads a bright green _3:14 AM_ on a sweltering Thursday in the middle of New Mexico.

Jamie Blake rolls back over and cuddles into her pillow.

Tomorrow, she’ll keep wearing the leather of her cowboy boots thin. For now, Blake curls even further into herself-- trying desperately to not disrupt poor Cooper-- and fight the tears out of her eyes. Fights the pain out of her chest and the trembling out of her fingers. The things that come with the overwhelming agony of wanting a hit of something. A hit of _anything_.

After the Madre, stuck in an old world nightmare… Jamie could take a little bit of everything.

She reaches out and takes a sip from her luke-warm bottle of water instead.

Here’s to a life of aimless wandering.

Fuck, here’s to Jamie Blake being free.


	2. Sun Sentinels

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jamie is in love with the rain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> is it necessary for me to tag the dogs as characters? no. did I do it anyway, because they are important to Jamie and she is the main character? yes.

Snow wasn’t new for Jamie. If she walked north-west-ish out of Westside, or even just New Vegas proper, it would take a few hours to reach Jacobstown.

The town was always covered in snow; Old poems and diary ramblings compared it to a white, wool blanket being laid over the land. It sounded endearing, sitting with your loved ones next to a fire, hands worm with choice drink-- Jamie was always partial to Vee’s spiced rum recipe, even when the world outside of the 38’s rooms was sweltering-- and watching the flakes dancing through the sky.

Even on the walk up to town, with trees and fresh, flourishing life surrounding you, it only snowed. 

Rain, though…

\- - - -

Jamie and her dogs-- Guts and Cooper-- continue their hike through Zion. Their timeline isn’t set in stone, but with the pounding in the back of her head and the energy weapon-buzz in the air, it’s obvious that it will end up raining soon. Doing a quick three-sixty of her surroundings, Jamie can’t help the snort that escapes her. Guts-- _bless that sweet, sweet boy_ , she muses in her head, watching on in fond amusement-- is sat to pounce, doing the downward-dog and wagging his tail a mile a minute, staring down a couple of geckos hidden horribly within a bush. Cooper trots his way over and sits himself down next to her leg, huffing at their pack-mate.

If this were the Mojave, Jamie would pay this interaction no mind. She’d whistle for her boys to keep moving along, and they would. But for now-- Jamie looks out along the horizon line, searching for changes in the distant masses of clouds-- it seems like they have some time to play around.

The difference is nice

\- - - -

The rain was something that Jamie had only seen a few times, most of them now lost to her, only found in her dreams; Inklings of her lost lifetime only formed in deep, drug-addled sleep. The thoughts were corded to the old her, thick ropes keeping the woman behind the curtain bound in her past.

Two bullets to the head scrambled her egg. Well, more than just _two bullets_ , after being cut open, basically enslaved, buried alive... No, wait, when did...

These two bullets straight into her noggin’ also had an unfavorable effect on her long-term memory. The Courier steadfastly continues petting Guts’ belly and looking out at the rainstorm drenching the landscape around her, instead of scrambling through her journal or the pip-boy calendar to work it out for herself.

\- - - -

Jamie learned she loved the rain two years ago.

If she closes her eyes tight enough and lets all of the other thoughts run out of her head, Jamie can translate the faint pitter-patter of these rain droplets into something very different. The woman can put herself back there, a simpler time, in the much simpler life of a recovering patient.

_Stuck in a Ranger substation above a sheer cliff, not enough daylight to make it back to the Dead Horse’s camp. Her head had been pounding since the early hours of the morning, and Blake wished she had something strong enough to take the edge away from the pounding in her skull. She pushes her sunglasses away from her eyes and steadies her aim, scouting the land below through the scope of her rifle._

She remembers the yao guais shuffling in the grass, what looked to be a mother lounging in a patch of grass and watching her cubs tussle on the cracked asphalt. They looked remarkably similar to old-world calendars, the ones featuring a new set of kittens every month.

It would have been a much cuter sight if Jamie hadn't had the fresh memory of an injured adult one ripping the head off of a gecko.

_Her hands grip onto the stock of her rifle, knuckles turning white as another wave of pain rolls into her. Blake winces, hissing and laying her forehead onto the window sill. She wants to put another bullet in her head if it means that the pain will just ease up a little. Instead, she takes a deep breath and focuses on the storm clouds in the distance._

_There had been a distinct lack of rain during her time in Zion Canyon in particular. Follows-Chalk had commented on the discrepancy the other day, mentioning the clouds getting darker and darker every day._

_It feels as though her brain is clawing at the inside of her skull, screeching all-over for it to end. Blake wants to cry, and she would if it wouldn’t just make everything so much worse. But, somehow, for some reason, the pressure in her head eases, suddenly, but not all-together._

_Blake furrows her brows, pulling herself away from the window sill. The energy inside of her head feels like it seeped… Outward. Into the air surrounding them-- her and Follows-Chalk, as per usual, because he could not only put up with her constant rambling, but give back as good as he got-- feels like holding a charged laser pistol, right before you pull the trigger. The electricity running through your hands, with a buzz running fainter and fainter throughout the rest of your body…_

_Here, though, that current ran through her entire body. Curious, Blake leans around the make-shift barrier between them and the outside-- a moth-eaten curtain hung on a stand-alone curtain rod stuffed at the top of the doorway-- and looks. It becomes clear, looking with the entirety of her vision, not a hole barely big enough to look through her scope with, that’s it finally raining. Sweet little droplets gracefully falling, landing, running. The world stills; Only a sweet sound keeping everyone calm, docile._

_And then the sky opens up._

_It’s ripping apart in jagged streaks, slashing down at the world below, clawing rocks from cliffs and tearing chunks of dirt-- whole plants, even-- away from the earth, whipping it through the sky. Lightning strikes on the other side of the valley, and a whole flurry of seconds Blake doesn’t care to count pass before the thunder rumbles in their ears._

_The Courier grins. Warm nostalgia swimming from her toes, up and up, through her bloodstream, and making her feel like a milk-drunk puppy._

\- - - -

It feels like a whole different world, comparing the _then_ and _now_ ; A place that she could imagine living the rest of her life in, taking a husband from one of the tribes and starting a family. Jamie Blake wishes she could do so; She wishes that she was wired in a way that made staying somewhere, without the itch to move on and on, until she hits something she can’t move passed... 

It feels like wanderlust; Jamie doesn’t know exactly what the word is, but it feels like somewhere else is better for her.

Anything is better than wasting away in an old-world crypt, warring internally with yourself, day after day after _day_ , because you need to make sure the world keeps turning, that the ones you love-- platonically, romantically, the rigid depths that make up an expanse in-between-- are kept safe.

And then your whole world changes when you finally realize that _you_ are the one causing them pain.

Her sobs are muffled in the soft fur of Guts’ belly.

\- - - -

When Jamie wakes up, curled into Guts and Cooper at her feet, her eyes are dry and itchy.

The rain has stopped.

\- - - -

Jamie stays put long enough to brew a thermos-worth of coffee, before setting off to New Canaan.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! Thank you so, so much for being interested enough to look into this vignette series! This isn't quite a passion project for me, but writing is something I have always enjoyed doing in my spare time, and I decided to pop this little sucker out there. Because, you know, I crave validation and whatever.
> 
> Comments are super appreciated!


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